Verify, verify, verify

There are several message boards/forums on the internet where people talk about politics - or rather, since they are usually a mixture of Democrats, Republicans and Independents, argue about politics.

I visited one yesterday, and found an OP (original post) that blamed Rush Limbaugh for the fact that parents in some Texas town went ballistic when they learned that the school was going to launch a pilot program in the next year, and make it mandatory for kids to learn Arabic.

Well, a couple of days ago Rush did indeed read from an article which said that parents were kind of upset - so the parents were already upset (whether they had a right to be or not) before he'd even heard of it.

But the OP declared that it was only after Rush read an announcement of the news and then ridiculed it on his show, that the parents got all upset and demand that the program not take place.

And the OP continued in this vein, despite the fact that he (or she) was rebutted by several people who pointed out what I've pointed out here - that Rush had just been reading the article and hadn't influenced the parents at all.

But I wonder just what the OP was thinking of, to make this accusation in the first place, because it is so demonstrably untrue, and yet h/she clearly believed it.

I can only put it down to a lack of reading comprehension. People can read words, but they don't understand what they say, or can't extrapolate what they say and make the correct deductions from it.

That is why it is imperative that people never take anything at face value. If you see a headline on an online newspaper that says one thing, don't just settle for reading the headline and consider yourself informed. You must read the entire article, to see if there are facts there that contradict what the headline says.

Then of course you've got the gossip sites like TMZ and Yahoo news, which report such earth shattering detals as "so-and-so caught without her makeup! See photos here." or "Christina Aguilera messed up the national anthem. [One bloody line, big deal] or so-and-so are getting a divorce. Garbage, all of it.